COURT
Copyright (c) 2001 João Pedro Neto
This game is played on the following board:
Also, each player starts with 2 extra friendly stones (called peasants), 2 red and 2 blue stones in a reserve off board.
- PEASANT - The Peasant moves to the forward empty cell, and captures diagonally forward (like the chess Pawn).
- NOBLE - The Noble (a stack with a peasant and a blue stone) moves and captures like the chess Knight.
- CLERIC - The Cleric (a stack with a peasant and a red stone) moves and captures like the chess Bishop.
- BANKER - The Banker (a stack with two peasants) moves and captures like the chess Rook.
- TURN - On each turn, each player must do one of the following actions:
- Move a piece according to its moving and capturing powers.
- Promote a friendly Peasant, i.e., place a power from the reserve over that Peasant.
- GOAL - The player that does not have any Peasant on the board, or cannot move, loses the game.
The goal means that there is a tension between arming the player's army with powers, and keeping a sufficient safe number of Peasants on board. There's an optional extra rule: Demote a friendly piece, i.e., remove the power from a Noble, Cleric or Banker and place that power on the reserve. The piece becomes a Peasant. But I think it removes a bit of the tension featuring in Court.
An opening example White promoted b3 to a Banker. Black moved c6-c5. Then White moved b3-a3 and Black replied by promoting the Peasant at g6 to a Cleric.